Vol. 463 No. 2
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Dáil Éireann debate - Thursday, 14 Mar 1996
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Written Answers. - Equal Treatment Arrears.
82 Mr. Dempsey asked the Minister for Social Welfare if he will review the regulations in relation to equal treatment arrears to allow payment to people who may have claimed disability benefit on 15, 16 or 17 November 1986, and who are disqualified from equal treatment payments in view of the fact that they were not technically in receipt of benefit on 17 November 1986; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5904/96]
Retrospective equal treatment payments are being made to married women who received lower entitlements than other claimants in similar circumstances in the period December 1984 to November 1986, when the EC directive on equal treatment was fully implemented. Because people whose payments were reduced by the implementation of the equal treatment provisions in November 1986 received transitional payments to compensate for that reduction, the married women concerned are also receiving retrospective transitional payments.
Under the regulations which gave effect to the equal treatment provisions the effective date, as far as entitlement to transitional payments for people who were in receipt of disability benefit is concerned is 17 November 1986. In order to qualify for transitional payments, a person is required to have been receiving payment, inclusive of an adult dependant increase, on any day in the week prior to that date and to have lost the adult dependant increase under the new conditions which came into effect on that date. A claimant not in receipt of disability benefit in respect of 17 November 1986 did not qualify for transitional payments.
Transitional payments were intended to compensate people who, having been in receipt of benefit for a period prior to the effective date, suffered an actual reduction in payment as a result of the new situation. I do not believe that a review of the regulation to cover the type of case referred to by the Deputy, would be justified in those circumstances.
